Rating: 2/5
Marie is a French vampire living in Pittsburg. She only sucks the blood of criminals. She reads about some mafia wars in the streets and chooses the mafia as her prey.
At first, they’re easy enough — drain their blood, then make it look like a mafia hit. But when the boss catches her off-guard and tries to rape her, she only drains his blood. As a result, he becomes a vampire.
Can Marie fix her mistake before he turns the entire mafia into a gang of vampires?
Between Oscar and Beverly Hills Cop III, John Landis wanted to make a movie about mobster vampires. Warner Bros said, “No. Here’s another vampire script.” So, he rewrote the script to make it about mobster vampires. He described the movie as “a Hammer movie directed by Scorsese.” 😬
A core tenet of genre mashups is that you must write a story arc for each genre you’re touching. Otherwise, the story feels incomplete — why genre blends are longer. This movie avoids that problem by only doing setup and never doing payoff.
Another cardinal rule is you don’t show a better movie in your crappy movie. Landis shows people watching several classic horror movies throughout.
Landis wrote Marie as a sex object, but Anne Parillaud is a better actor than Landis expected and created a nuanced character — not a stellar character, but more than what’s on paper.
That doesn’t stop the movie from designing every shot to be as leering as possible. Even after Landis removed 20 minutes of “sexual content,” Parillaud is consistently nude, dropping her panties or showering. Creeps (including the love interest) try to sneak a peak.
I know I’m in the minority here — many horror fans love this movie. I needed something to make up the difference for what the experience lacks — gonzo gore, car chases, anything. This movie lacks most of what makes one watchable.